SHEL's Recent Performance at the Hotel Cafe In Hollywood

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a performance of SHEL and interview the four twenty-something Holbrook sisters at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood, an esteemed Los Angeles live music destination that had been on my list of venues to check out for many years.  When my music industry friend Angela suggested that I catch this performance of SHEL, I was totally unfamiliar with the band.  I did my usual research for going out to hear a band for the first time by watching the SHEL YouTube channel, reading reviews on the SHEL website, and scrolling through their posts on the SHEL Facebook page (with 18,000 fans). Wow I thought to myself, I can't believe that I am just discovering these four young women for the first time.   After seeing them perform, they were even better in person, then what can be seen on YouTube, as SHEL engaged a large enthusiastic audience within the confines of the Hotel Cafe.  They have great stage presence and I got some good pictures of SHEL under difficult low lighting at Hotel Cafe and my many photographs hosted on flickr can be seen below:

I have conjured up the label of alt-Americana band to describe SHEL due to their unpredictability of their musical style when combining keyboard, fiddle, percussion (including a squeezebox), and mandolin that showcased sounds of irish/celtic, classical, alt-folk, americana, alt-country, and steam punk.  These Holbrook sisters, Sarah, Hannah, Eva, and Liza, from Fort Collins, Colorado, now residing in Nashville, are in the recording studio for their second album, but it is a mystery as to the direction it might take.  Frankly, I was blown away by these accomplished musicians and songwriters, as they very well could be the next big thing.  It wasn't so long ago that Mumford and Sons were playing Hotel Cafe, and look at them now, and you could say that SHEL is what an all girls version of Mumford and Sons might be like.

Some writers have compared SHEL to the Dixie Chicks early in their career, but to me, SHEL reminds me of an all girls vocal version of the Punch Brothers, minus the esteemed sounds of Noam Pikelney's banjo.  I do have to acknowledge, however, that in the second half of the concert, electric guitars were introduced into the mix, as can be seen in my photographs. As one gets to know, SHEL, one discovers that Eva is an extraordinary designer of hats.  Thus, it is fun seeing what hat the Eva might be wearing that she designed.  In their officially produced videos, many times, you will see all of the girls in specially designed hats by Eva.  The hats are exquisite and quite fitting for their music,

What very well might launch  the awareness of SHEL is being part of the soundtrack for the upcoming Nicholas Spark's Best of Me movie performing Hold On. The soundtrack album was released today, October 7, 2014 and the movie is scheduled for release on October 17, 2014. Appearing with SHEL on stage for the last song was Gareth Dunlop from Ireland who recently collaborated with SHEL on Hold On for the Best of Me movie. The song can be seen on YouTube as a duet with Gareth and Eva the night they wrote the song,  On the Best of Me soundtrack album, they are appearing with many of my own favorites such as Lady Antebellum, Hunter Hayes, Colbie Caillat, and Kacey Musgraves.  Being a fan of the soundtrack, could very well get me to see the movie. Incidentally, Gareth Dunlop opened for SHEL at the Hotel Cafe.

SHEL skipped the September 2014 Nashville Americana conference, awards, and performance week to perform in Claremont for the Levitt Pavilion stage and then the Hotel Cafe.  I hope that their Pasadena sister Levitt stage noticed and might consider booking SHEL for summer 2015.  Again, thank you Angela for recommending SHEL and I had a great time interviewing these four young talented women of SHEL which can be seen here in my eight minute and a half minute hosted on my trekntravel YouTube channel below.

White Arrows to Appear at Troubadour on December 15

The other day I had the chance to sit down with John Paul ("JP") Cabellero and Steven Vernet from the five member Los Angeles based White Arrows who in 2012 released their first LP ("Dry Land is Not a Myth"), including a vinyl version, and toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia.  For those who saw the White Arrows open the 2012  Labor Day weekend FYF Fest at the Metro friendly, Chinatown adjacent, State Historic Park, you can see them up close and personal at the historic West Hollywood Troubadour for KCRW presents the Invisible Children Holiday Benefit Show on Saturday night, December 15, 2012.  White Arrows, who got their start almost three years ago, had a residency at the old Spaceland in Echo Park club, giving them a chance to refine their sound and live performance persona. They have already come a long way in such a short time, playing SXSW twice, and their USA/Europe/Australia tour, White Arrows, knock on wood, are hoping to get a Coachella 2013 invite.  Their sound is described as psyschotropic, but is a blend of driving rhythms and pop.

During 2012, White Arrows was on the road so much, that they were glad to have places in Los Angeles to rest and recover, since they were home no more than 3 weeks at the longest, before hitting the road again. They consider the "Eastside" of Silver Lake and Echo Park as their spiritual home, with band founders Mickey and Henry Church having grown up in Pacific Palisades, and JP having grown up in Hermosa Beach and Steven in the Montclair area.  JP described himself as a contrarian, and so as to not do PE, he joined the marching band at Mira Costa High school playing percussion instruments and bass. While Steven started playing the drums in elementary school, but when he couldn't convince his parents to invest in a drum set, he learned the bass guitar which he played in band while at Montclair Prep.

Interview: Abdul Malik, Community Artists Guild

Daood sits down with Abdul Malik, actor and founder of the Community Artists Guild....

Daood: Before discussing your acting career, you are the founder of CAG (Community Artists Guild). Can you take us back to the inception that led up to this essential institution?

Malik: I left the industry in Hollywood in the late seventies to move back to my original home Detroit and raise my family in a more culturally aware environment. During my first years there I got involved with the professional and community arts industry and realized that a lot of aspiring actors were throwing it all away to go to Hollywood without a clue to what the industry was about. The misconception was that talent alone would ensure your success, which is a big mistake in this city. It's not who you know, but who knows you and what you do. There was also the age old predator factor of unscrupulous producers exploiting local talent and not compensating them because they're uninformed and unrepresented, and mostly non-union. So, I started the CAG to educate actors, with my 30 years of experience in the industry, on what they needed to know in order to be successful in Hollywood and also how not to be exploited in Detroit or anywhere else.

Daood: To what would you attribute significant differences from your contemporaries as an art institute?

Malik: Well, most of their programs have turned their backs on the programs, institutions and visionaries that trained us in this community, such as A.C. Bilbrew's performing arts training workshops, Eubank's Music Conservatory, C. Bernard Jackson's Inner Cultural Center, Nick Stewart's Ebony Showcase Theater, PASLA, Marla Gibb's Crossroads, the Watts Prophet's Workshop, the Mafundi Institute, in that the main focus was training and giving our youth exposure to the arts. Most of the training was free or low cost, also, rather than merely using and taking credit for the artistic resources of the community for their own personal benefit. Our focus is on training our students in the technology and techniques of the future that will give them a viable income in their chosen profession, as well as the skills and humanity to pass those skills on to the next generation.

Just about every Major Black and Hispanic actor in this business who came here with no connections in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's came through those institutions and hasn't done a thing to establish anything to replace them. Nobody's pushing our kids in this community up, so we had better be about the business of pulling them up. And that means all cultures and races in our community or you'll have them all fighting for the same crumbs off the table and trying to destroy each other. The system will only replace them with another group or culture of people and we have failed to understand that.

Daood: .…and those attending CAG have the opportunity to perform a variety of classical text such as?

Malik: We do all the classics from every genre, stage, television, and film as well as independent and avant-garde works. We give our students a well-rounded education in the performing arts from Shakespeare to August Wilson because versatility is the key to survival as a performing artist or technician. Also, the Black, Asian and Hispanic history and experience in America is unique in that there has never been a time when those cultures have not had contact with all the other cultures in the American Diaspora.

Daood: Elaborate on the pertinent aspect of working on scenes from published plays as well as screen plays?

Malik: As a professional performing artist, and especially a minority artist, your job is finding the next job. Therefore you should be auditioning in every aspect of the industry so that you have a constant source of income or you will quickly become homeless in this town. That includes theater, film, television, writing, public speaking, voiceover, narration, and any other form of media. This industry will need your skills at any given time to do any given thing, and as an artist you are here to fulfill their needs, that's how we get paid, by being necessary to tell the story. You therefore need to be familiar with the published scripts and screenplays, which usually is the standard and basis of the genre, as well as being open to the new material being introduced. That is what makes you marketable no matter what your race, creed, gender, religion or color.

Daood: As your students become astute in their craft are there opportunities to perform original pieces?

Malik: Absolutely and more so now than before, because the access to the technology is so easy and just about anyone that has a good story to tell can be seen or heard. There are thousands of stories of the Black Experience alone, from ancient Africa to the present that haven't been told. We constantly encourage our students to crossover into all other trades in the industry.

Daood: Is musical theatre apart of your genre and what are your thoughts of the adaptation of Dreamgirls to the silver screen?

Malik: We have moved away from theater for the most part: 1) because there are many organizations that focus on those areas [and] 2) our focus is to help artists gain and sustain employment to survive, and theater in Hollywood in not something that will sustain an artist, New York is different in that respect. I thought Dreamgirls being adapted to the screen as well as the new version of A Raisin' in the Sun and Lackawanna Blues is a great move to expose our stories from our point of view because plays do give you an opportunity to get more into the story rather the visual nature of the story.

Daood: If you had the opportunity of a live multi-media dream play combining dance, original music, what would be the subject matter and why?

Malik: But I will say that the most important projects these days would be on what the previous leadership of the sixties movement would think about the State of Our Race, Country, communities, leadership and our youth today as compared to their periods and what would be their solutions to our problems today.

Daood: Venturing back into the novelty of acting, at what pinnacle point in which you absolutely new that becoming a thespian was not going to be a short story?

Malik: Probably, every year that I've been actor and found that it was not going to be something that I could do by myself. I want to give up everyday, but can't afford to, and I can't let down all the people who have supported and believed in me, especially my family, wife and children who have sacrificed the most in my absence while on tour.

Daood: With countless films and stage performances, far too many to mention here, apart of your repertoire, is there any particular roles that you have not played of interest?

Malik: I don't know…After portraying Malcolm X and performing for his family, followers, nemeses, and all over the country and world for the past thirty years and playing him at different points in his rich life, and being investigated by the FBI, I think was the ultimate role. Maybe Iceberg Slim or one of the characters in Donald Goines' Books because their stories don't glorify the horrors of the fast life in our communities and are geared toward steering our youth especially our young girls away from that life style.

Daood: Any films, stage performances can we look forward to seeing you in?

Malik: I will be doing my final command performance of the One Man Play Brother Malcolm X: Reminiscences of a Revolutionary by Frank G. Greenwood here in Los Angeles on Malcolm's birthday where I started in 1978. Of course as a working actor you could see me anywhere, Stage, Film, TV, or hear me as a voice over artist.

Daood: Are there any forthcoming CAG projects in which we can look forward to attending?

Malik: Our Big Screen filmed showcase of our workshop actors is forthcoming after the writers strike is over. Also Our First Takes: Kids in the City, Visual Media Communications after school program will be screening their film shorts for the public at Johnnie Cochran Middle School in June.

Daood: Thank you for partaking in the interview!


Those interested in more information about CAG:
Website: http://www.communityartistsguild.org/
Phone: 323 779-7791
Email: dactor@pacbell.net